March, 2020 - June, 2020
Mad Max Robot is a given high-poly model that was retopo'd and styled into a Mad Max theme with the materials made in Substance Painter. The model was then presented on Sketchfab and in Unreal Engine 4.
The first step was to retopo the robot, reducing the poly count. Blender was mainly used for retopology as it has an easy way to generate a decent unwrap by setting edges as seams for the UVs as well as sharp edges to have the smoothing show correctly.
The next step was to add details in the normal map for the robot in Substance Painter such as screws, details, etc.
Now it was time to create the different materials such as painted metal, normal metal, rusted metal, etc. to really fit the Mad Max theme we had to go for. I first had to decide what should be metal and what should be paint. After that was decided, I added layers of rust, dust and sand to fit the bare desert world of Mad Max.
The final step was the presentation and setting up decent lighting in sketchfab and Unreal Engine 4.
I've had several baking and smoothing issues as I wasn't used to working with Blenders way of unwrapping, luckily they were fixed after noticing it didn't look correct.
I personally do not like lighting in UE4 as it is definitely not WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), it makes it a tough experience to get the best lighting.
